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Prof. Johan Pouwelse To Take On RIAA Expert
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Marie Lindor has retained an expert witness of her own to fight the RIAA, and to debunk the testimony and reports of the RIAA's 'expert' Dr. Doug Jacobson, whose reliability has been challenged by Ms. Lindor in her Brooklyn federal court case, UMG v. Lindor. Ms. Lindor's expert is none other than Prof. Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of Delft University of Technology. It was Prof. Pouwelse's scathing analysis of the RIAA's MediaSentry 'investigations' (PDF) in a case in the Netherlands that caused the courts in that country to direct the ISPs there not to turn over their subscribers' information (PDF), thus nipping in the bud the RIAA's intended litigation juggernaut in that country."
Whether or not the RIAA manage to drown out the technical side of the argument in legal noise.
I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that this is actually the candle in the darkness that the article author believes to be the case (and no, to those that'll accuse me of being a thief of property and a subversive, I don't download music or videos. I just think the **AA are just playing dictator, and now facing their just come uppance).
Thirdly because her jury won't be technical no matter what someone here thinks, the jury will likely be lost in technological talk that will seem foreign to them.
That may work in her favor. People who don't regularly use computers tend to be intimidated by them, and people who do regularly use computers tend to have more than a few stories about how their unreliability and mysteriousness has lead to them losing data, accumulating spyware, and discovering websites in their Favorites and on their home page that they definitely didn't set themselves.
If the people on the jury have even touched a computer in their lives they'll probably be sympathetic to this approach. That's not to say I haven't met people who aren't -- but they're typically know-it-alls who feel everybody should be able to account for everything on their computer if they simply pay attention to what they're doing (and in the past I've demonstrated to them why they're wrong by showing, for example, how easy it is for a malicious individual to link your computer behind-the-scenes to image files on websites you'd never visit (well, for demo purposes, I'd use gnu.org) by misusing comment areas on vulnerable websites.)
1. Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright.
2. Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Step number two would criminalize approximately 50% of the current Windows users. This move would seriously hamper MS's future revenues and cannot be allowed. 3. Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
4. Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anti-circumvention regulations. I'm assuming that you have heard, Viacom is going to have the DMCA repealed during their lawsuit with YouTube? 5. Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes.
and my favorite,
6. Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.html I'm reasonably certain that if the DHS were to use their position/power to spy on the **AA all of these law suits would simply vanish. I'm thinking that one DHS director finding out how much less of a cut he got than senator so-and-so would put paid to that game.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
One of the reasons they didn't like MediaSentry was this: At least the rest of the world has figured out what most of us Americans haven't: America's right to privacy is a rapidly disappearing illusion.
This is complete and utter hogwash, and it seems like you're all pissy because you lost (although I don't think you said one way or the other). Perhaps you got a "bad" jury. Did you know that jury selection is two-sided? Both the prosecuting and defense attorneys take part in the process. If you had a lame jury, blame your lawyer. Speaking from experience, and having participated in jury duty not too long ago, I can assure you that even though much of the case was boring, each and every one of us made our best attempt to stay alert and remember facts for deliberation. We tried very hard to put aside personal beliefs and make a decision based on the law and the evidence heard. At the beginning of deliberations, the jury was nearly equally divided between guilty and not-guilty verdicts. After hours of deliberation and going through the facts each of use remembered, and also asking for a read back of part of the transcript, we ended up with one guilty verdict and the rest not-guilty. Ultimately, we had a hung jury because the one person who wanted a guilty verdict was unable to set aside the fact that the alleged victim was a child, and refused to budge even though the prosecution had failed to even remotely prove their case. I think he was wrong. But I can say this about him: he was very passionate about his opinion, and was trying very hard (even with the rest of us in opposition) to do what he felt was right. So, if the defense attorney is worth anything, there will be a balanced jury that will give the case a fair shake.
GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
The outcome means nothing to the jurors at the end of the day, most will want to get out of jury duty and just get back to normal life duties.
This is complete and utter hogwash
No, it's complete and utter truth. Consider yourself lucky that you were on a jury with a different experience. Consider yourself lucky that the judge let you get by with a hung jury. I know of a case where a jury deliberated for over 1 month because the judge refused to allow a hung jury and after 1 month the lone holdout finally gave in. Jury duty is often about who can outlast or outstubborn (if that's even a word) the others.
Jury duty isn't about right and wrong. It's about trying to get 12 people to agree on a verdict, whatever that might be. I have unfortunately served twice on a jury and neither was a great experience, although I'm grateful they only took a few days. It's also not about "a decision based on the law" as you state, but how the jury interprets the law, which is a gigantic distinction. Judges cannot under any circumstances tell juries what the law means. They can read the applicable law statues to the jury but it's up to the jury to decide what they think it means. What a jury thinks a law means and what judges and lawyers think a law means are 2 different things.
This battle has become the combined weight and resources of the four major record companies funneled through the RIAA, against the might of an aroused Slashdot user community. Every insight, every chink, every technical shortcoming in the RIAA's boilerplate cases that's exposed, discussed, and dissed here helps the defense. The RIAA affiliated companies may believe they have bought the Congress, but the public at large are still the ones with the votes. I'm certain no corporation, or group of corporations, has ever fought a battle before against so many thousands of people able to organize and provide their own insights, each able to expose one more little lie in the Plaintiff's snake-tongued, slippery arguments.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This is not completely off-topic, but almost.
In my work in statistics (in education), validity has to be shown every time analysis is done. It's never a once and for all thing. This is a real drag for research, but it helps to show that what you say has a degree of validity. In my field, any expert witness offering evidence-based testimony would be required to complete the task of showing validity right from the start, otherwise the results and conclusion are not worth paying attention to.
bang goes my karma... again...
I'll never forget the first time I discovered it. I'd checked my sitemeter and found some referrals from "slashdot.org". I went there and found what appeared to be a "forum" or "discussion board", but one which was unlike anything I'd seen before. There was an incredible, highly intelligent, debate going on over a post on the Elektra v. Santangelo case.
People were debating over issues -- sort of like a Talmudic debate -- citing to different portions of the transcript, and to different portions of different legal documents, for support of various points. They seemed to be quite scholarly, and not unlike lawyers, but I didn't think it was a lawyer's site, so I asked my youngest son, who is a techie, if he'd ever heard of Slashdot. And of course he said "of course" and proceeded to tell me what it was. And my life hasn't been quite the same since.
One of my most memorable experiences was the "honor" of being roasted and villified by some, and defended by others, in my Slashdot interview, and the ensuing comment period, over my abruptness with some of the questioners and commenters whom I considered a bit troll-like.
I am proud to be part of this robust, questioning, diverse community, and would be overlooking a valuable resource were I not to seek the input of its members.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful